Former soldier sentenced to 14. years over spying for Iran

Daniel Khalife escaped from HMP Wandsworth in late 2023

- TARA COBHAM

Former soldier Daniel Khalife was branded a "dangerous fool" by a judge yesterday who jailed him for more than 14 years for escaping from prison and spying for Iran.

Khalife, 23, escaped from category B prison HMP Wandsworth in southwest London by clinging to the underside of a food delivery truck in September 2023. He was caught on a canal towpath by a plainclothes detective three days later.

Described by police as the “ultimate Walter Mitty character that was having an extremely significant impact in the real world”, Khalife was also serving in the British army when he “exposed military personnel to serious harm” by collecting sensitive information and passing it to agents of Iran.

He was paid in cash for the secret information and told handlers he would stay in the military for 25-plus years for them.

Prosecutors in his trial said Khalife, originally from Kingston upon Thames in southwest London, played “a cynical game”, claiming he wanted a career as a double agent to help the British intelligence services, when in fact he gathered “a very large body of restricted and classified material”.

However, his defence lawyer Gul Nawaz Hussain KC called the double agent plot “hapless” and “sometimes bordering on the slapstick”, more Scooby-Doo than James Bond or Homeland.

Jurors at Woolwich Crown Court found in November last year that Khalife had breached the Official Secrets Act and the Terrorism Act. He was cleared of carrying out a bomb hoax and had already admitted during his trial to fleeing Wandsworth Prison. He was sentenced to 14 years and three months imprisonment at the same court yesterday.